


In My Heart

by SailorSol



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Female Characters, Female Protagonist, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-15
Updated: 2014-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-15 20:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1318402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorSol/pseuds/SailorSol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Of all the things that Regina Mills is--orphan, queen, widow, mayor, mother--the only one that matters to her any more is the last.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariestess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariestess/gifts).



_And you'll be in my heart_   
_Yes, you'll be in my heart_   
_From this day on_   
_Now and forever more_

  
\-- "You'll Be in My Heart", Phil Collins

* * *

Of all the things that Regina Mills is--orphan, queen, widow, mayor, mother--the only one that matters to her any more is the last. She has loved her son since the moment she laid eyes upon him, though she spent a frustrating week at the beginning wondering if she had made the wrong decision, wondering if she deserved someone like Henry in her life.

She’s glad she decided to keep him. He has always encouraged her to be better; not in words, but in his presence alone. She strives to make Storybrooke a safe place for him to live, and she would give anything to ensure the happiness of her child.

When Henry runs away, she’s frantic. She doesn’t know what the curse might do to him outside Storybrooke, and she can’t even send Graham to look for him beyond the borders of the town. She aches in a way she had forgotten was possible, deep down to her very core, with a sadness she hasn’t felt since Daniel had his heart ripped out by her mother in front of her eyes.

When Henry returns, she feels only relief, until he declares this woman is his _real_ mother, and that is another stab through her already darkened heart. Jealousy flares; she is the one who sat by Henry’s bedside after nightmares woke him; she is the one who soothed scraped knees and wiped his fevered brow with a cool cloth. She was there for his first steps and his first words, all of his first days of school, and every other first that matters. This other woman, this _imposter_ , gave Henry away as if he were nothing more than an unwanted plaything, and Regina could not bring herself to let this woman into their lives.

But Emma Swan just won’t go away.

Regina tries every trick she knows, resorts to magic she hasn’t used in years, to make Swan leave. Has Graham arrest her, and what does he do but turn around and make Swan his deputy. The blond moves in with Mary Margaret, and just the thought revolts Regina. She imagines they spend every night sipping cocoa and sharing stories and being otherwise disgusting.

Swan promises to leave. Regina oversteps her bounds, tries one last ploy to put this woman out of her life permanently, and nearly kills Henry.

No one--not Henry, not Emma, not even the ever-righteous Snow and Charming, not even Gold of all people--will acknowledge that Regina nearly lost something important, too. To them, she is just the Evil Queen again, and not a mother.

A mother, who forgot to put the good of her son, first.

So Regina changes. Fights against what everyone has always expected her to be, what her own mother had set her up to become. She tries to do the right thing, to help where she can. It’s a constant struggle, every day living up to the image that Henry had once had of her, as a woman to be loved and respected, instead of feared.

Somewhere in the jungles of Neverland, the world built on belief alone, she starts to accept that Emma is Henry’s mother too. That maybe he has enough love for both of them, as long as he can be saved from Pan and brought home. The hug he gives her once he is safe is worth every second of her sorrow, worth having to share him with Emma and David and Snow and even Gold.

But she is doomed to never have a happy ending, and the best she can do is to give Henry one. To give Henry and Emma the life they never had together, to give Emma the chance to be the mother she had struggled to become. Henry won’t remember Regina ever again, but in her heart, Regina will know that she raised him to be brave and strong, to have a good heart.

That, despite being the Evil Queen, she was still a good mother, and that someone had loved her, even if for a little while.

* * *


End file.
